Hiring trial nears day of reckoning

Top prosecutor may miss legal showdown

Closing arguments in the trial of Mayor Richard Daley's former patronage chief are set to begin Monday, with prosecutors telling jurors that the fix was in for city jobs and the defense countering that a crime was never committed.

Jurors will be left to decide whether Robert Sorich schemed to dole out jobs to political workers or simply recommended applicants to hiring officials in several of City Hall's largest departments.

In a last-minute change for the government, Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins may not be available for closings because of family obligations. Collins gave the opening statement for the prosecution and questioned many of the trial's key witnesses.

If he cannot give the final rebuttal argument, jurors and spectators will be deprived of a final match of wits between the sober, plainspoken prosecutor and Sorich's theatrical and dogged attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin.

The rebuttal instead would fall to Assistant U.S. Atty. Philip Guentert, a seasoned prosecutor and supervisor of U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald's public corruption squad.

Arguments will open with Assistant U.S. Attys. Julie Ruder and Barry Miller summarizing evidence they allege proves that Sorich and his aide Timothy McCarthy handed out "blessed lists" of job applicants who worked for pro-Daley political armies.

Prosecutors say the alleged scheme was designed so the Daley administration could secretly circumvent the Shakman decree, a federal court order prohibiting political influence in most city hiring.

Durkin and McCarthy's attorney, Patrick Deady, will echo public comments they made last week: that the government has failed to prove any scheme existed.

The defense will argue "in the end, the middle and the beginning that this was nothing more than a violation of the Shakman decree and belongs in a civil court," said Rick Halprin, a veteran defense attorney and close friend of Durkin's.

Prosecutors have alleged that Sorich and his three co-defendants engaged in a classic fraud scheme that involved falsifying job-interview ratings forms.

Whether Collins or Guentert argues for the government, they will come down hard on any efforts by the defense to portray the defendants' action as "politics as usual," said former federal prosecutor John Kocoras, who now works in the private sector.

In addition to Sorich and McCarthy, former Streets and Sanitation officials John Sullivan and Patrick Slattery are charged in the alleged scheme.

Slattery faces one fraud count based largely on the testimony of Catharine Hennessy, an attorney and high-ranking city official. Slattery's lawyer, Patrick Blegen, is expected to remind jurors of testimony that called her honesty into question.

Fraud charges have been dropped against Sullivan. His attorney, Cynthia Giacchetti, is left to argue against allegations that he lied to federal agents.

Deady, meanwhile, is expected to argue that prosecutors selectively chose evidence and witnesses to convict McCarthy.

A methodical and logical lawyer who hews closely to the facts, Deady will tell jurors that the government has presented them a puzzle where the pieces don't fit.

But it is Durkin's argument that jurors might most anticipate. For six weeks, they watched him pace the courtroom, hands tucked in his suit-coat pockets, peppering witnesses with questions about their political affiliations, their roots in Chicago and what they knew about city hiring.

During the trial, he seemed to develop a rapport with the jury, which sometimes laughed at his jokes and at other times seemed bemused by the length and substance of his cross-examinations.

Durkin even looks the part of an old-fashioned defense lawyer, with a bushy mustache and swept-back hair.

At times blustery and commanding and at others self-deprecating and forgetful, Durkin is what jurors might expect a lawyer to be, Halprin said.

With a powerful voice steeped in a Chicago accent, "he really fills the courtroom," Halprin said.

Many of his cross-examinations spanned hours and related to complicated testimony connected to reams of documents. But while he struggled occasionally to locate exhibits or stumbled on the pronunciation of names, he worked almost exclusively without notes, seeming to question witnesses off the top of his head.

While Collins insisted that the trial remain tightly focused on the defendants, Durkin repeatedly made references to Chicago's political history. He suggested that Sorich simply engaged in practices established long before he joined the mayor's office in 1993.

In a court filing Friday, prosecutors asked the judge to cut off such arguments: "It is no defense that the defendants did not create the patronage system, or that the patronage system is endemic in Chicago." Courtroom spectators had widely anticipated the matchup of Durkin and Collins. Their sometimes good-natured, sometimes angry exchanges during the trial broke the tedium of mundane testimony.